The Last Precinct
by DarkTyger
Summary: A young Persian hybrid in the real world, struggles to accept the world around her and face the reality that not everyone knows the meaning of acceptance. based on FireHybrids 'A New Beginning' verse. 15
1. Agent Rayne

**The Last Precinct. **

Flames crackled and fires burned. The warehouses and derelict buildings that housed the homeless lit up the night, its modest structures engulfed like the pyres of a bonfire. Everywhere, screaming and smoke filled the heated air as dozens and dozens of people ran, all seeking escape from the terror of the blazing fire. Rusted drums filled with pieces of discarded wood and chippings that once offered warmth to the cold hands of the homeless, now offered pain and suffering, as they exploded because of the petrol placed inside to fuel its contents.

Fire-fighters and emergency officials swarmed the building, like ants to an anthill. Dowsing the 10 foot flames with water from their firehouses, like trying to stop a fire by pouring petrol over it, the water only seemed to feed the blaze even more.

Amongst the rush on the ground, no one noticed the shadow, silently making its way across the roof of the building adjacent the chaotic scene. Seemingly permanently hidden behind its dense layer of grey clouds, the moon shone brightly in the night sky, filtering down, its rays settled on the corner of the rooftop. The deserted rooftops of the city were silent as oppose to the screaming chaos on the ground.

A tall figure surveyed the scene with a stoic glance.

-Interesting, they rush to save the humans..yet the ones that can help, get left behind-

Devil-red eyes stole a glance at the clock tower, in the middle of the casino on the outskirts of the city. The lone figure on the rooftop felt calm and collected, a vast difference to those on the ground. She shivered despite the warmth from the blaze, almost imagining that the blackness she felt for these people, was a physical being, and was just waiting for her light to go out completely so that it could happily devour them all.

The water from the fire-fighters hoses continued their onslaught. A voice, soft yet commanding, filtered through the air.

"Futile yet they continue..they dont give up easily do they?"

The hooded figure turned to face its companion.

"Pika" Agreement was the only correct answer in this case.

"Do you think we should help?"

"Are we your conscience now?" Came the reply, the owner of the second voice glanced down at the hooded figures belt, where 5 red/white balls hung. Proudly, one of the only things on the rooftop that was.

"Now now..none of that." A slight smirk of satisfaction made its way onto the figures face. Not a smile, no, there had been no smile, nor a hint or one, for a quite a while. A smirk had no place on the face of this person, atleast that's what everyone else thought. The _nice_ ones but then again..nice ones didn't exsist..not anymore. No, smirks didn't belong on the faces of young women, much less dead eyes, and a cold interior with an equally cold exterior.

The scene below wasn't getting anymore interesting then it had five minutes ago when she glanced at it last. Rayne gave one last smile at the chaos before turning on her heel and walking off.

Not far from the slowly burning building, a young, dark-haired hybrid screamed as a grinning male toke advantage of the situation around him, grabbed and pinned her against the wall. Nearby, his mates watched and waiting in fascination and lust.

"Shut it whore, and take it, like it is freak!" He began to work his fly open and loosen his pants.

A shadow shifted.

An explosion of pain erupted in the attacker's head, making his eyes exploded with light, red lights danced across his eyes and the next thing he knew was the feel of the rushing air as he was picked up and thrown roughly away by a single hand. The hard ground met his back and his lungs collapsed as the air, that was once inside, vacated, he bounced once then slid to a stop.

"Bastard!" he coughed as he rolled to his feet and opened his eyes to see who had dared attack him. Several feet away, a tall figure wrapped in darkness stood watching him, its silhouette all but invisible if it weren't for the background of burning houses and hazy grey smoke behind it.

The figure lifted its hand, adjusting the black fingerless gloves it wore with the other. Black half-gloves of a thief. All of a sudden he felt a cold stab of fear enter his heart. This was exactly what his mother had warned him against.

_Them. _

Then he growled in anger. He was mistaken. This was just a poor fool who was trying to be a hero. "Boys, take it!" He laughed. "Rip its fur from its freakish body!."

Already grinning in anticipation of the thought of another female to play with, the grinning pack of male-ego needed no second order. They gave a yell and extracted knives and iron bars before leaping towards the shadow.

However, a rapid spin-kick stopped the charging owner of the knives, attack, while one of the knives were seized and used against him, stabbing into his own chest. The attacker blinked in confusion before toppling over, his chest a puddle of oozing, dark blood.

"What the hell?" Came the surprised yell of the remaining masculinity intoxicated men. The would be, if he could be, rapists let go of the dark-haired hybrid girl and prepared to have some real fun. The girl scared at the events yet grateful for the rescue, fell to her knees and prayed, this was exactly that..a rescue.

A calm voice filled the night air. "As much as I love a woman on her knees, now is not the time" Using the fallen attacker as a springboard, the shadow jumped over the remaining people and landed on the other side, crouching and sweeping out her feet, the attacker gave a loud "Oooff!" as he hit the ground for the second time.

Jumping on top his shoulders, devil-red eyes stared at him and a neatly groomed furred face reflected in his fear filled eyes.

"Wha..wha..what are you going to do to me! Freak of nature! Abomination!"

"I'm surprised that someone of your..calibre, would know such a word. Weak and powerless, you continue your tyrant of insults? Some would call that gutso..but the smart people would call that a death wish" The hybrid on top of him replied. Grinning in satisfaction at her prey, she never missed an opportunity to scared someone with her fangs. Everyone has to have a hobby.

"Are you going to kill me? Scum? Animal?"

"And stoop down to your level? I think not. I'm better then that"

"Then what are you going to do?"

"Spare you. Not because I'm nice. I'm far from it. I would tear your heart out and feed it to my dog, if I had one, that is. No. I dont want hybrids to get a bad name, you humans do that quite well enough on your own without my assistance. Be grateful that you are alive. Arsehole"

Climbing off the wounded human, Rayne resisted the urge to kick him enough, that it would ensure that he could never get it up again.

Walking over to the young hybrid, she reached into her small bag clipped to the side of her well-loved black PVC pants. Checking the girl over and helping her up, she handed the card to the girl. The girl raised a trembling hand and glanced at it:

**The Last Precinct. **

_Where you go when there is nowhere left. _

The wounded, continued to stare, dumbfounded at the two freaks, before a hard, booted foot smashed into his jaw and everything went black...

**The Last Precinct **

**File No: 007494. **

**  
Name:** Rayne

**Alias:** Hunter

**Species:** Persian

**Age:** 19

One part practitioner of the occult, one part con-woman, one part thief and one part Poke'mon, Rayne would be the first to admit that she's all parts a right royal bitch. Still, to her virtue (despite a preponderance of other vices), she puts himself on the front line in a struggle against the most diabolical evils (peanut butter), risking time and again both her sanity and her soul to protect the world...when she feels like it. Born human, not much is know about her origin, Rayne's life began the way it was doomed to continue – soaked in bloody death and despair.

Rayne's upbringing in working class Brisbane was a difficult one - bitter and broken over and stressed in general, Rayne became all too quickly indoctrinated into some of life's harsher realities within the school based underworld. Not knowing things were only going to get worse, Rayne lived on the hope that things would be better and that one she would show her tormentors who would come out on top. Rayne, was continually in trouble because of her behavioural problems. Theft being an regularly excuse. .

By the age of fourteen, Rayne had developed an interest in the occult, immersing herself in any books she could find on the subject as a means of escaping the harsh reality of her childhood. After a night of heavy drinking, after school, Rayne's much loved stalkers decided words weren't enough. to survive she began to learn the art of being a thief, something for which she had remarkable innate talent. Inspired by a her own experience's with arseholes and seeing the torment of others, Rayne found exploiting the powerful and elite to give back to their powerless victims., a thoroughly enjoyed past time, until the day she could get her own back.

Sometimes if you wished (or bribe) hard and long enough, you will get what you want. Revenge or justice as Rayne has convinced herself it is. It makes her feel better.

The incident condemned Rayne to a hybrid human-Poke'mon existence. never truly belonging to either world. She has none of a poke' Mon's typical aversion to such things as weaknesses, increased appetite and increased sleeping habits and but still retains the Poke'mon basic instinct's and unique abilities. Draven MaCnally, whose family had shunned him for being a hybrid, had found Rayne at age 16 living for the most part on the streets, finding abandoned hybrids and giving them hope.

Rayne's desire for vengeance against the creatures responsible for her and her hybrid allies tortured existence, fuelled by her need for acceptance make Rayne and Draven a truly formidable hunting team. Revenge is a dish best served hot and heavy, that's not how it goes but Rayne was never one for tradition.

Here we are, some three years later, and truth to tell Rayne really hasn't changed that much at all. She's old enough to know better now but, of course, she doesn't – she's been to hell and back, stared down the demons of society and the ones that plague her nightmares, alike and blackmailed them both into the bargain, seen her friends and lovers slaughtered simply for having the misfortune to have known her and yet she still has a cutting retort to dispense at the most inappropriate of moments and a mind for brutal retribution on any who would do her wrong. Rayne has teetered on the edge of an abyss, engaged in a struggle against her own impulses towards darkness and against the evil and violence that continues to haunt her life.

Rayne returned to her roots in the neighbourhoods of Brisbane to revaluate what she wanted from her life as a hybrid, ultimately determining that she had lost her core values. While she still considers herself as someone working outside the boundaries of the law, she now also speaks for those with neither the means nor the power to speak for themselves. Curiosity killed the cat, isn't far from the truth when it comes to Rayne. Her evolution into the hybrid Persian that claimed the rooftops and alleyways as her territory, was perhaps a little to close to home...


	2. The Beginning

** Agent Diaries - Rayne 007494 **

**_Brisbane, Australia. Three years prior. _**

My mother always said not to do things your may regret when your drunk. I have no problem with this advice, its perfectly good mother-like advice except for one problem. The problem is this: How are you not going to do things you may or may not (depending on if your me or not, for your sack, I hope you not) regret when your drunk, if your drunk? Because when you're drunk, you dont regret anything, except in the mourning, but by the time you've woken up, put your clothes back on and reassured yourself that the girl is not ugly or a relative, it's too bloody late, there's nothing to regret because you've already made that mistake but you couldn't do anything about it because you were too drunk to regret doing it in the first place, because you just dont care because when your drunk you dont care.

Simple, right?

If it was, you would think I would learn but it isn't and I haven't and I doubt I ever will because I dont regret what I do because I dont care, because..you know..

Besides, this perfectly good mother-like advice would be even better..if it wasn't said in the middle of an all you can drink wine convention with the relations. Kind of an oxymoron that one..like Microsoft works or a lesbian stripper who only feels comfortable taking it all off for men.

It just _doesn't_ happen.

Either this is the alcohol that has decided to take up permanent residence in my bloodstream, the wrongs meds or the goddesses way of saying "Screw You! Listen to your mother, next time" but this isn't the way I pictured spending my Sunday mourning.

Awake early and coherent.

Much less, be awake and functioning, or functioning at all because Sundays have been invented to get rid of all the religious folk for the mourning and ensure that the truly gifted are given some sleepy time or atleast some time to go over their excuses as to way they aren't at church. (Sorry I was at home practising witchcraft and being a lesbian..)

All those years of video games and glazed eyeballs have finally paid off but the fantasy isn't going to plan..there isn't a woman or suitcase of cash anywhere!

Atleast I can see.

Which isn't necessarily a good thing because it's Sunday and we all know what Sundays are for.

If this were a normal story, or your everyday movie, or even a cheesy TV show, there would have started with a girl. A girl next door. Or the phone number of an extremely attractive, tall, dark, and sexy woman with a throaty voice and a fixation on tall, rather gangly, spiky haired Australians with accents no one could ever seem to place.

But it's not. (A normal story, your everyday movie, or a cheesy TV show, that is.)

It started with a computer.

Often enough I hear the phrase "Parents know best" and have always dismissed this as untrue because seriously, who ever got drunk, had sex and popped me out was obviously not thinking very "bestly" that night..or two minutes…

Whatever.

_shudder_-

6.00am: Alarm goes off. Which is actually quite odd in itself because I don't _have_ an alarm.

6.01am: Open eye.

6.01am: Shut eye.

6.02am: Open eye. Squint at brightness. Odd. Bright doesn't do well with my complexion. Neither does "Awake early" for that matter.

6.30am: Stumble to bathroom in defeat. After 20 minutes of trying to convince oneself that one did not have to use the bathroom, ended in having to use the bathroom even more then when first started.

Look in mirror.

Gazing into the mirror was the hard, funny enough the easy part was being able to comprehend what was staring back.

Odd.

Since when did I have two eyebrow bars?

_Dear Diary _

_Note to self. When drinking do not A: Take tablets, B: Drink, C: Take tablets whilst driving. _

_From me._

Did someone slip some PCP into my coffee because you know that would be so cool..also make some sense but more cool then anything.

Once upon a time, there was a brain cell.

This brain cell was a good brain cell. He thought important thoughts, like "Breathe!" and "Clean underwear!" and "Call your mother!" And he lived in one's head.

And there was once a bad brain cell. He thought not-so-important thoughts, like "Rum!" and "Women!" and "Short-sheet Matt's bed!" And he, also, lived in one's head.

But he was a right nasty little bugger, and the good brain cell being, in his honest opinion, a self-righteous ponce, the bad brain cell killed him. Quite a lot, actually.

In any event, the good brain cell was gone now, and while the bad brain cell had taken over the breathing, he absolutely refused to work on the clean underwear situation or even discuss getting his mum on the phone. And what was left over was one bad brain cell, playing very loud Metallica while scraping his nails across one's mental blackboard over and over and over again.

This was the fairy tale one usually told to describe a massive, mind-boggling hangover of near-epic proportions.

Actually, one would have to be able to pull some serious BS out of one's arse to be able to account for this..or atleast fake their way through it..like most housewives these days.

Okay. So the throbbing was gone. Heads weren't supposed to throb, unless they were possessed by B-movie alien creatures. Which I'm pretty sure mine wasn't.

I was a Poke'mon.

Say it with me.

I **AM** a Poke'mon.

"Hi, my name is such and such and I am a Poke'mon!"

For once I want to know what happened last night.

After debating on weather to go mad to simplify the matter at hand or reach for the latex gloves for easier access to the BS, three cups of coffee, two toasted vegemite sandwiches (puts a rose in every cheek!) and a partridge in a plum tree or however it bloody well it went.

**-flashback. The Previous night- **

"Who wants to play a game?"

"Naked twister?"

"No"

"No deal"

"Fine"

Whiteness..proberly equal to no memory..or we got the wrong wattage for the light bulbs again.

Ah! Ye olde Poke'mon game. Great. Nothing makes a drunk look stupid then playing a kids game but hey..no one cares because their drunk and no one cares when there drunk because..their drunk.

Win win all round.

"Hey! Hey! Butch..yeah..not you..the other one..yeah..order for you..box thingie..since it wasn't moving..we figure its safe..or not turned on"

"Want to know why this mouse cords so long..so its easy to retrieve after I shove it up your arse"

blink- -blink-

Hmm..free box..delivered by person shaped object in uni---clothes. Okay, good thing. Free box?

Wooohoo

"Free box!"

"Well open it.."

"Its..its..itsaboy!"

"Idiot it's a Nintendo.."

Ohh..a free Nintendo? "They have to give those anyway now to get people to play them?"

Surprise. surprise.

"It has cables"

"Most do"

"Get up'ed. I meant for your computer."

"Interesting, nintendo's gone virtual..might do a hell of a lot better. People might be able to use the controls then."

"'Congratulations! You've been randomly selected…'Pfft..who the hell would select you for anything..let only randomly?"

"Has anyone ever told you to get bunked lately? Gimme that My preciioouus..piss off"

I started to plug in the cables……

**---memory description has been censored because of curse words, violence and nudity-- **

… finally finished plugging them in.

Whew. What a rush.

"Your playing Poke'mon? You PLAY Poke'mon?"

"Yes, my team rocks my socks off"

"Your wearing slippers"

"Shutup and learn. I'll pwn your arse."

"Yes, your so L337 using the word pwn"

_-blink- -blink- _

"Spyware n0bs are sending by snail mail now?" Referring to the abundance of pop-ups on the screen.

"No, its chat! Wooho..naked chat"

"I swear you take that shirt of again..I'm stapling it to you"

"You know, you have a fairly good team there..you should battle"

"Ha! Thanks for the compliment.. your still not getting my pants"

Uploading Poke'mon complete!

_Goodie. _

"I quite like my team, their my preciousss"

"Uh uh. I mean look-at-it! Pikachu Lv. 80, Jolteon Lv 74, Arcanine Lv. 80, Ninetales Lv. 67, Marowak Lv. 78, Persian Lv. 80. What do you have no time on your hands inbetween blackouts?"

"Noo..I don't have anytime at all! Those levels are terrible! I have no money for a gameshark, therefore I cant cheat, therefore I have to level up the old fashioned goody two shoes way!. It makes me sick just thinking about it."

"Poor baby"

_-Zzzzzziiiiittttttpppppttttt- _

"It shocked me! The fucking computer shocked me and it hurt. It danmed well hurts because it shocked me. Piece of Microsoftic crap! Fucking owie..stop laughing arseholes!"

"Are..are..you..okay?"

"Ahh!..I cant see, or taste or smell. Its burns dammit"

"Your fine, your not shocked, just shnockeded"

****

You get the general idea. Fucking computers. Dad always said they were bad for your health.

He wasn't wrong.


	3. Agent Draven

**Sydney, Australia. Present Day. **

Rayne sat in the car feeling disgusted. The look on her face could probably wound someone from about 50 metres, and certainly fatally injure within 20.

She was disgusted with Draven. Disgusted yet sympathetic but don't tell him that. He was keeping secrets from her and that she didn't like.

"You did something last night" She starts, "and I'm not just talking about your hanging around Cutter's Bar, with whoever you were drinking with. Rayne doesn't care he was drinking, she doesn't care that she wasn't invited, he knows she wouldn't of gone anyway, she trusts him completely to keep their secrets from everyone else, not from her.

"I don't know what you're getting at." Draven is big and gloomy in the passenger's seat of the Black Subaru, his glasses tight on his face; he sinks lower into the leather-clad seat, as if he is trying to hide deep within himself.

"Oh, yes you do. You went to see her."

"Now I sure as hell don't know what you're talking about." He stares outside his side window.

"Oh, yes you do." She cuts across the lane at a vigorous rate of speed, driving because she insisted on it; because there was no way she was gong to allow Draven or anyone to be in the drivers seat right this minute. "I know you. Damn it, Draven. You've done this before. If you did it again, just tell me. I saw the way she looked at you when we were at her house. You saw it, you danm well did and were happy about it. I'm not stupid."

He doesn't answer her, staring out his window, his face shadowed by the shades and averted from her.

"Tell me, Draven, Did you go see Mrs. Stewart? Did you meet up with her somewhere? Tell me the truth. I'm going to get it out of you eventually. You know I will," Rayne says, stopping at a yellow light turning red. She looks over at him. "Okay. Your silence speaks volumes. That's why you acted so strange when you saw her this mourning at the meeting, isn't it? You were with her last night and maybe things didn't go quite the was you hoped, so you got surprised this mourning when you saw her?"

"That's not it"

"Then tell me"

"Denise just needed someone to talk to and I needed information. So we helped each other out," he says to the window.

"Denise?"

"She helped out now didn't she?" he goes on. "I dot some insight about Emily's death, about what a dickhead her husband is, about why the FBI might be after him."

"Might be?" She swings left on Cross Street, heading towards to old gothic ruins that house the underground entrance to the Last Precinct, Sydney Head Quarters. "You seemed pretty sure of yourself in the meeting, if what just happened could be called a meeting. This was guessing on your part? Might be? What are you saying exactly?"

"She called me on her mobile last night." Draven explains. The car pulls to a stop.

"Why did Mrs. Stewart call you last night?" She can't quite bring herself to call her Denise.

"She wanted to talk," he says, opening his door. "Come on, let's get on with it"

Emily Stewart could have been passed for eight or nine with her tiny fragile face and form. When her most recent school photograph was taken last year, she had worn a buttoned-up Kelly green sweaters; her flaxen hair was parted on one side and held in place with a barrette shaped like a parrot.

To their knowledge, no other photograph had been taken of her until the clear Saturday morning of February 7, when an old man arrived at the marina, to enjoy a little fishing. As he set up a lawn chair on the pier, he noticed a small pink sock floating in the water. The sock, he realized, was attached to a furry foot. That's when Police Homicides decided to share the gruesome discovery with the TLP.

"We have a sock partially on the left foot, a shoe on the other. We have a watch. We have a necklace. She was wearing blue flannel pajamas and panties, and to this day they have not been found. This is a close up of the injury to the rear of her skull..."Agent Markus flicked on the projector.

"Emily Stewart's body was nude" Markus continued. "Upon inspection by ME, it was determined that she had been sexually assaulted, with upper chest and shoulder wound, where there are areas of missing flesh. She also has been gagged and bound with blaze orange duct tape. Her cause of death, a single small calibre gunshot wound to the back of her head..."

"According to family members and friends, Emily wouldn't have been hard to control. She was shy, easily frightened. Plus, she had a history of being sick, in and out of doctor's offices. She was accustomed to being compliant with adults..." Markus pauses to let the information sink in.

"In other words... she pretty much did what she was told..." Draven added, sounding disgusted.

Mrs. Stewart was in her mid- to late thirties and dressed entirely black. Her skirt was full and below her knees, a sweater buttoned to her chin. She wore no make up, her only jewellery, and a plain gold wedding ring.

She looked the part of a spinster missionary, yet the longer Rayne studied her, the more she saw what her puritanical grooming could not hide. She was beautiful, with smooth pale skin and a generous mouth, and a curly hair the colour of honey. Her nose was patrician, her cheekbones high, and beneath the folds of her clothes is a voluptuously well-formed body. Nor had her attributes successfully eluded anything walking and breathing in the room. Draven, in particular could not take his eyes off her.

After numerous hours of interviews, Rayne and Draven were no closer to catching the young hybrids killer then to securing world peace.

And now this..

Rayne needed a day off.

All the time last night Draven has been thinking about Denise. He likes the way she wears her hair just long enough to brush her shoulders, and he likes it blond. Blond is his favourite, it always has been.

When he met her at her house for the first time, he liked the way she looked at him. She made him feel big and important and strong, and in her eyes he saw that she believed he knew what to do about problems, even though her problems are beyond fixing, no matter who she might look at. She would have to look at God Himself to get her problems fixed, and that isn't going to happen because God proberly isn't moved in the same way men like Draven are.

Her looking at Draven he way she did was proberly what got to him most, and when she moved close to him as they were searching Emily's bedroom, he felt her closeness. He knew trouble was in on its way. He knew if Rayne sensed the truth, he would hear an earful.

Several times this mourning Draven has had flashes in the throbbing darkness of his soul. They are electrical, like a picture blinking in and out of a TV that is seriously malfunctioning, severely damaged, and linking in and out so fast that he cant see what's there, but is given only fuzzy impressions of what might be there. Lips and tongue. Fragments of hands and shut eyes. And his mouth going on her. What he knows for a fact is that he woke up naked in her bed at seven minutes past five this mourning.

Rayne is like a dog with a bone. Once she gets a hold of something, she wont give it up until every last morsel is striped from the carcass and then she look for more. If only all women cared as little as she does about things that don't matter. If only all women cared as much as she does about things that do matter. Draven imagines Rayne would understand a bad night. She would make coffee and hang around like enough to talk about it. She wouldn't lock herself in the bathroom and cry and holler and order him to get the hell out of her house.

Draven walks off quickly from the car and back towards the entrance, his big boots slipping. He slips and catches himself with a grunt that turns into a heave as he vomits, bending over deeply in loud heaves, and a bitter brown liquid splashing on his boots. He is trembling and gagging and believing he will die when he feels her hand on his elbow. He would know that hand anywhere, furry, strong, sure hand.

"Come on," she says quickly, gripping his arm. Her tail snapping back and forth. "Lets get you into your room. It's all right. Put your hand on my shoulder and for God's sake watch where you step or both of us are going down."

He wipes his mouth on his coat sleeve. Tears flood his eyes as he wills one foot at a time to move, holding on to her and holding himself up as he slips through the wet ground around the building where they first meet.

"What if I raped her, Rayne?" he says, so sick he might die. 'What if I did?"


	4. No regrets

**Agent Diaries - Rayne 007494 **

**Brisbane, Australia. Three years prior **

"You're what?"

"I- I'm in love."

"With a woman."

"Yes." Defiantly, Ness stared back at her older sister. It was Christmas 2002 and she was sitting around the dinner table with her sister Kerri, her boyfriend Shaun and their 12 year-old daughter Emily, who had just excused herself to use the bathroom. Her mother, Terry, was also there, but her father had left on business and now this was all the family she had. She wasn't feeling sorry for herself, though. She was happy, her family had accepted her as a hybrid. She was, as she'd just repeated for Kerri, in love. Three months ago, Ness had met the most incredible woman. Her name was Sarah and she was also 16 years old. They'd met at a party and Ness had soon realized that Sarah was gay... Sarah had kissed her, Ness had suddenly realized something about herself, and now, she was ready to tell the world. She was so happy, she didn't care who knew about it! And more than anything, she wanted to tell her family. She knew they'd be happy for her - how could they not be? For months, her mother had been pestering her to divulge her secret, to tell her who she was seeing. There was something in her eyes, Terry had said, that made Ness's whole face light up.

A little smile, a glow in her cheeks - without a doubt, she had to be in love. For months now, Terry had been voicing her suspicious, trying to coax out of her daughter the secret to her mysterious happiness. It had been so hard to keep her mouth shut all this time. Ness knew it would be the greatest relief when her family knew - it was hard to explain, but she knew they'd understand.

_Eventually. _

Suddenly, though, Ness began to wish she'd kept her mouth shut a little longer. Gazing around the table, she was confronted with something that, little did she know, she would spend the rest of her life facing. Far from the happiness and excitement she'd anticipated, her family was suddenly staring at her strangely, as though she was some capricious stranger or something. No one was smiling.

It was suddenly unbearably quiet.

From Shaun's raised-eyebrow skepticism, to her mother's look of blank disbelief, to Kerri's expression of nothing less than disgust, Ness's grin slowly began to fade. Oh, God. What had she done?

"I can't believe you," Kerri spat, her voice lowered in revulsion. "You- You're-" She floundered, lost for words. Her baby sister was a- she couldn't even say it to herself, to say it would be to admit that she was... Different.

She hadn't even guessed.

Ness stared back coolly, her face struggling to hide the torrent of emotions suddenly colliding within her. "I'm what?" Oh God, she wanted to die.

"You're - gay!" she exploded finally. "Ness... You're sick!"

Ness's world shattered around her.

Standing in the debris of her happy family, she looked at her sister in utter, overwhelming disbelief. How could she think that? How could she **possibly** think that? She was in love! She had finally found someone who understood her, accepted her for what she was and loved her absolutely... And that was somehow wrong? Sick? Wildly, she looked to her mother for support. "Mum?" she asked, her voice trembling. "Mum, I-"

"Ness, your sister's right," Terry said quietly.

"Excuse me," Shaun muttered, rising from the table. He glanced down at Kerri and she nodded to him.

She glanced quickly from Ness to the door, then said, "Get Emily. We're leaving."

"What? No... No, I'm leaving," Ness said quickly, also getting up. "If that's how you feel, I don't think I can stay here." She was shaking now, holding her breath in case it should expel tears along with it. Christmas was suddenly the greatest disaster she could have imagined. It was as though every single one of her worst fears for the past three months had been confirmed, as though she was in a waking nightmare.

"Ness, don't leave like this," Terry pleaded, grabbing her arm.

Ness pulled away, suddenly overcome with mortification. "There's nothing to say, mum," she said briskly, trying not to cry. "Is there?"

"Well... Well, we can talk about this! We can talk it out, see if we can get you help or something, I don't know! But Ness, don't go - please, don't go just yet," her mother begged. It had been bad enough when Ness had _evolved_ but back then, her father had been around more and his reaction had only made her more determined. She knew what her daughter was like - maddeningly stubborn. This wasn't going to be another demonstration of that. Ness's father always been particularly close to his children and he had loved them. When Ness had announced that she was a hybrid, he'd been furious with her. They fought for hours, yelling, screaming - maybe he'd hit her once or twice, Terry couldn't be sure because she was in another room - until finally, Ness had screamed, "You can't change my mind, dad! This is my life!" and walked out.

Now, weeks later, it was happening again. What was she trying to prove? Why did she always have to shake the family up, ruin special occasions like this? She was impossible! Terry's hand began to shake uncontrollably, and she tried to set down her glass of wine before she spilled it entirely. But as she was setting it down, Emily suddenly burst into the room. "Auntie Ness!" she cried, with a huge grin on her face. "Guess what?" Terry started violently. The glass toppled with a light "chink" against the candles, and red wine was suddenly spreading across the white tablecloth, staining it permanently. Terry covered her face with her hands, trying to stop the tears that were now flowing down her face, and with a soft cry, rushed from the room.

Helplessly, Ness looked up down at her neice. She adored Emily and the feeling was quite mutual. There was only 8 years between them, and Emily was already talking about wanting to become a cop like her "favourite aunty in the whole world". She was twelve years old and painfully impressionable – maybe that was why Kerri was so adverse to her news. Somehow, though, Ness knew that wasn't the only reason. Uncomprehendingly, Emily looked up at her. She was wringing her hands together unconsciously, tiny little hands, as petite and freckled as the rest of her. Her hair was loose tonight, a stunning tangle of orange curls, and as Ness looked down at her, only then did she notice the tears that were spilling down her own face. Quickly, she wiped them away. She sniffled and self-consciously ran a hand through her black hair.

"Auntie?" Emily looked very small and scared. "What's going on?"

What could she say? Ness took a deep breath, then, "Emily, um, I-"

"EMILY!" Kerri barked sharply. "Go see Shaun!"

"But mum, I-" Emily protested. She looked back at Ness, and Ness turned her head away. She couldn't watch. She wasn't even supposed to be here... She had to get out of here...

"GET OUT!" Kerri shouted at his daughter. Emily jumped and cowered behind Ness slightly, terrified because her mother rarely yelled at her. The expression on her face froze her to the floor and she was too scared to move. She didn't even know why she was yelling!

Ness snapped. "SHUT UP KERRI!" Ness screamed at him, moving unconsciously between Emily and Kerri. "She hasn't done anything wrong!"

"You goddamn little-" She couldn't say it. She struggled for a moment, then just spat, "**Don't** bring her into this!" She glowered at her and Ness knew exactly what she wanted to say. She could read it all in her eyes, she didn't have to say a word. The emotions she could see within her terrified, infuriated and sickened her all at the same time. For a moment, their eyes were locked together. Then she broke away angrily.

She reached down and picked up her handbag, then leaned in close to her and said, almost inaudibly, "Kerri," staring him straight in the eye, "**I** haven't done anything wrong, either."

Then Ness walked out, and she didn't look back.


	5. Assurance

**Sydney, Australia. TLP HQ. Present Day. **

As she remembered that moment, three years ago now, Rayne's lower lip began to tremble and she bit down on it unconsciously. She didn't cry. Onions made you cry, this - this wasn't worth the tears. It was only a memory and she was only being sentimental.

It is very hot inside the quarters that the Agents of The Last Precinct call home and Rayne has given up adjusting the thermostat. She sits by the window and watches Draven on the bed. He is stretched out in his black pants and black shirt, his glasses lonely on the dresser, his black boots on the floor.

"You need to get some food in you" she says, grateful that their Poke'mon were not here to witness the unenviable humiliation of their master and friend.

Nearby on the carpet. Her mud spotted black nylon knapsack used to carry items from Denise Stewarts house that might aid in the investigation of her hybrid daughters death. Wherever she has walked into the room she has tracked red mud, and when eyes fall on the trail she has made, she is reminded of a crime scene, and then she thinks about Denise Stewart's bedroom and what crime may or may not have be occurred there within in the past twelve hours.

"I can't eat anything right now," Draven says firmly from his supine position. "What if she goes to the police?"

Rayne has no intention of giving him false hope. She can't give him anything because she doesn't know anything."' Can you sit up, please? It would be better if you sit up. I'm going to order something" She gets up from the chair and leaves behind her bits and flakes of drying mud as she walks to the phone by the bed.

"Three large bottles of water," she orders. "Two pots of hot Earl Grey tea, a toasted bagel and a bowl of oatmeal. No thankyou. That will do it."

Draven works himself up into a sitting position and shoves pillows behind his back. She can feel him watching her as she returns to her chair and sits down, tired because she is overwhelmed, her brain a herd of wild Rapidashes galloping in fifty different directions. She is thinking about murder and young girls and hate crimes, about rope and knives and cut skin, about what Sarah might be doing and trying to image Draven as a rapist. He has been foolish, no, stupid, with women before. He has mixed business with the personal, specifically he has gotten sexually involved with witnesses and victims in the past, more then once, and it has cost him but never more then he can afford. He is good working and straight laced, never corrupted and always focuses on getting the job done, pants or no pants. Never before has he been accused of rape or worried that he might have committed it.

"We have to do thee best we can to sort through this," she begins. "For the record, I don't believe you raped Denise Steward. The obvious problem is whether she believes you did or wants to believe you did. If it's the latter, then we will have to get a motive. Lets start with what you remember, the last thing you remember, and Draven?" She looks at him. "If you did rape her, then we will deal with that."

Draven just stares at her from his upright position on the bed. His face is flushed, his eyes glassy with fear and pain, and a vein has popped out on his right temple. Now and then, he touches the vein.

"I know you probably have no burning desire to give me every detail of what you did last night, but I cant help you if you don't. I'm not squeamish," she adds, after all they've been through, such a comment should be funny. But nothing is going to be funny for a while.

'I don't know if I can." He looks away from her.

"What I'm capable of imagining is worse than anything you may have done, she tells him in a quiet but objective tone.

"That's right, you weren't born yesterday."

'Not hardly," she says. 'If it makes you feel any better, I've done a thing or two myself." She smiles a little. "As hard as that might be for you to imagine."


	6. Mistake

Agent Diaries - Rayne 007494 

**-Flashback- **

You smile at her through the crowd of bodies crowding the small dance floor, and when she sees you she smiles back and begins to head your way. Moments later she's beside you at the bar, still smiling, and throwing money down on the counter to get you another drink.

_ I thought this might make me feel real. _

A few drinks later you feel looser, more pliable. She whispers in your ear the perfect requests: "You want to get out of here?" It seems like a fine idea, and so loop your tail around her arm. Outside the night chill hits your fur and feels like ice. You shiver, hoping that she'll put his arm around you, but she doesn't notice.

_ I just wanted to feel alive. _

In the cab you really look at her for the first time. Older than you, maybe thirty, but still attractive. She stares out the window for a moment and then, remembering your willing form beside her, turns and leans into you. Her lips are cold, and as she thrusts her tongue between your lips and into your mouth you can taste the vodka she's been consuming. Bitter.

_ Maybe if I just close my eyes..._

The cab stops in front of her apartment building. Not as nice as you expected, but she leads you upstairs to her apartment and you go willingly. It's furnished modernly; art deco, beige walls. In the living room she turns to you, takes you in her arms. She doesn't look you in the eye, but you don't really expect her to anyway.

_ I only wanted this to take me away. _

In the stumbling to her bedroom you lose your clothes. She doesn't cherish your nakedness. Doesn't run her hands over you and tell you that you're beautiful. You simply fall into her bed and writhe together for a few too short moments. Then it's over, and you start to think about the best way to gather your things and find your way back to reality.

_ Maybe if I just close my eyes this will all go away. _


	7. Desire

**Sydney, Australia. TLP HQ. Present Day. **

It isn't hard for him to imagine. All these years, he has preferred not to imagine what she has done with other women, he isn't your typical male.

Draven stares hard past her head, out the window. The plain single room is on the third floor of the underground, so there is no street to look at, just the other Agents going about their business like nothing was wrong. He feels small inside and has a childish urge to hide under the covers, to sleep and hope when he wakes up he'll discover he is here at HQ with Rayne, working a case, and nothing has happened. Funny how many times he has opened his eyes in a room and wished he would find her there looking at him. Now here she is in a room looking at him. He tried to think where to begin, then the childish urge clutches him again and he loses his voice. His voice dies somewhere between his heart and his mouth, like a firefly going out in the dark.

His thoughts about her have been long and drawn out, for years they have been, ever since they first met, if he is honest about it. His erotic imaginings are the most skilful, creative, incredible sex he's ever had, and he would never want her to know, her could never let her know, and he has not stopped hoping that something might happen with her, even though he knows it's a lost cause. He can never have her because she is a hybrid and he is human, he likes women to much and that is his weakness, but it is also hers and if he starts talking about what he remembers, then she might get an idea of what it would be like to be with him. That would ruin any chance. No matter how remote the chance, it would be killed. You cant get with get with a lesbian and to confess in detail what little he does remember would be to show her what it would be like and his fantasies would die. He wouldn't even have them, ever again. He considers lying.

"Let's go back to when you arrived at the Cutter's Bar." Rayne says, her eyes steady on him. 'What time did you go there?"

Good. He can talk about Cutter's bar. "Around seven," Draven says. 'I met Eise there and then Tyde got there and we had something to eat."

"Details," she tells him without moving in the chair, her red eyes directly on his, her tailed curled around the chair leg. 'What did you eat and what had you eaten during the day?"

"I thought we were starting with the Cutters bar, not what I ate earlier."

"Did you eat any breakfast yesterday?" she persists with the same steadiness and patience she has when she talks to those left behind after someone is annihilated by the randomness of a hate crime.

"Had coffee in my room," he replies.

"Snacks? Lunch?"

"Nope"

"I'll lecture you about that another time," she says. "No food all day, just coffee, and then you went to the Cutter's bar at seven. Did you drink on an empty stomach?"

"I started with a couple beers. Then I had a steak and a salad."

"No potato or bread? No carbs? You were on your diet."

"Huh. About the only good habit I stuck to last night, that's for sure."

She doesn't answer, and he senses she is thinking that his low carb habit isn't exactly a good habit, but she isn't going to lecture him about nutrition right now and about how eating animals is wrong, when he's sitting on a bed, miserable with a hangover, something she doesn't get ever, and in pain and panicky because he might have committed a crime or is about to be accused of committing one, assuming he hasn't already been accused. He looks at the grey walls near the window and images the Agent security unmarked Black Subaru's prowling the streets, looking for him. Psychic Poke'mon out in force. Hell, it could be Tyde himself out there ready to serve the handcuffs on him.

"Then what?"

Draven imagines himself in the backseat of Subaru and wonders in Tyde would handcuff him. Out of professional respect he could let Draven sit in the back unrestrained, or he could forget respect and snap handcuffs on him. He would have to handcuff him, Draven decides.

"You drank a few beers and ate a steak and a salad starting at seven" Rayne prods him in the easygoing but forceful way of hers. "How many beers exactly?"

"Four, I think."

"Not think. How many exactly?"

"Six," he replies.

"Glasses or bottles or cans? Tall ones? Regulars? What size, in other words?"

"Six bottles of VB, regular size. That isn't all that much for me by the way. I can hold it. Six beers for me is like half a beer for you." She smirks, Draven forgets that Rayne is equal parts European, equal part German/Dutch and equal part Australian. She can hold her liqueur.

"Unlikely," she replies. "We'll talk about your math later."

"Well, I don't need a lecture," he mutters, glancing at her, and then staring steadily at her in sullen stare.

"Six beers, one steak, a salad at the Cutter's bar with Eise and Tyde."

"Rights," he says crabbily.

Eise and Tyde were sitting across from him in the booth, a candle moving in the red glass globe, all three of them drinking beer. Eise asks Draven what he thinks of Rayne, what he really thinks. Is she a big shot thief, what is she rally like? She's a big shot but don't act like one, were Draven's exact words. He does remember that much, and he remembers the way he felt when Eise and Tyde started talking about her and her past relationships, pure speculation. She hadn't said a word to Draven about any such thing, not even given him a hint and he was humiliated and furious. He was the friend, the partner. That's when he switched from beer to bourbon.

I always thought she was hot, that idiot Eise had the balls to say, and then he switched to bourbon. Quite a set that one's got, he added a few minutes later, cupping his hands to his chest, grinning. Wouldn't mind getting into the coat of that one. Maybe she will give a show with some of 'girlfriends' if we ask politely? All that fur and that tail, bestiality might be fun. Well, you've worked with her forever, haven't you, so maybe when you've been around her enough, you don't notice her looks anymore, Eise had replied at Draven's glare. Tyde said he's never seen her but he'd heard about her and he was grinning too.

Draven didn't know what to say, so he drank the first bourbon and ordered another one. The thought of Eise looking at her body put him in a mood to kill something painfully.

Of course he didn't.

He just sat in the booth and drank and tried not to think about the way she looks when she takes off her PVC jacket, when she drapes it over her chair or hangs it on a hook behind the door. He did his best to block out the images of her taking off her suit jacket at a scene, unbuttoning the sleeves of her blouse, doing and undoing other females blouses in the same way she would her's. She has always been easy about herself, not showing it, not conscious of what she's got and taking off and reaching and moving because she has work and because the dead don't care or people don't think half-breeds like her are attractive. They're dead or wrong. Its just Draven who isn't dead. Maybe she thinks he's dead or wrong.

Someone knocks on the door and Draven's heart jumps and he thinks of the police and or jail and court…

He shuts his eyes in relief when a voice on the other side of the dor says, "Room service."

"I'll get it," Rayne says.

Draven sits still on the bed and his eyes follow her as she moves across the small room and opens the door. If she were alone, were he not sitting right here, she would probably ask who is there, and look through the peephole. But she isn't worried because she can take most things, and Draven is right he and wearing a Colt. 280 semiautomatic in an ankle holster, not that he would shoot anyone, he wouldn't mind beating the hell out of someone though. Right now he would be happy to slam his big fists into someone's jaw and solar plexus, like he used to when he was on the street.

"How are you folks today?" the slick faced vaperoen hybrid in uniform asks as he rolls in the cart.

"Fine, just fine," she says, digging in a pocket on her coat and pulling out a ten-dollar note. "You can leave it tight there. Thankyou." She hands him the folded note.

"Thankyou, ma'am. You all have a nice day now." And he leaves. The door shuts softly.

Draven doesn't move on the bed, only his eyes do as he watches her. He watches her loosen the plastic wrap from the bagel and the oatmeal. He watches her open the butter and mixes it into the oatmeal, then sprinkle it with salt. She opens another butter and spreads it on the bagel, then she ours two cups of tea. She does not put sugar in the tea. In fact, there is no sugar, none at all, on the cart.

"Here," she says, setting the oatmeal and a cup of strong tea on the table by the bed. "Eat." She walks back to the cart and carries the bagel to him. "The more you eat, the better. Maybe when you start feeling better, your memory will a miraculous recovery."

The vision of the oatmeal causes protest that rocks his gut, but he picks up the bowl and slowly dips in the spoon, and the spoon digging into the congealing oatmeal makes him think of Rayne digging through Denise Stewards yard for evidence, and then he imagines something else similar to oatmeal that causes another wave of disgust, and remorse. If only he had been to drunk to do it. But he's done it. Seeing the oatmeal makes him certain he did it last night finished what he started.

"I can't eat this," he says.

"Eat it," she replies, sitting back in the same chair like a judge, sitting up straight, looking right at him.

He tastes the oatmeal and is surprised that it is pretty good. Food at the HQ was never known to be anything to brag about. If feels good going down. Before he knows it, he's eaten the entire bowl and is working the bagel, and while he's doing this, he can feel her watching him. She isn't talking and he knows danm well why she's not saying anything and is watching him. He hasn't told her the truth yet. He is holding back the details that he is certain will kill the fantasy. Once she knows, he'll have no chance, and the bagel is suddenly dry in his throat and he can't swallow it.

"Feel a little bit better? Drink some of the tea," she suggests, and now she really is a judge dressed in black clothes, sitting upright in the chair beneath the grey window She'll sit in that chair for a month if she has to, he thinks. Maybe I should let her there for a month. She's not going anywhere and I tell her. I wish she'd quit looking at me like that.

"How's our memory doing?" she asks.

"Some things are lost for good, you know. It happens," he replies, draining the cup of tea.

"Some things never do come back," she agrees. "Or were never completely gone. Other things are just hard to talk about. You were drinking bourbon with Eise and Tyde, then what? About what time was it what you started on the bourbon?"

"Maybe eight-thirty, nine. My mobile phone rings and it was Denise. She was upset and said she needed to talk to me, asked me if I could come by her house." He pauses, waiting for Rayne's reaction. She doesn't have to say it. She is thinking it.

"Please continue,"

"I know what you're thinking. You're thinking I shouldn't have gone over there after drinking a few."

"You have no idea what I'm thinking," she replies, from her chair.

"I was feeling all right."

"Define few," she adds.

"The beer, a couple bourbons."

"A couple?"

"No more then three."

"Six beers equal six ounces of alcohol. Three bourbons is another four or five ounces, depending on how well you know the bartender," she calculates. 'Let's say over a three hour period. That equals approximately ten ounces. I'm being conservative. Let's say you metabolised one ounce per hour, that's the norm. You will still have had atleast seven ounces on board when you headed out of Cutter's bar."

"Shit," he says. "I sure could do without that math. I was feeling all right, I'm telling you I was."

"You hold it well but you were still drunk, more then legally drunk. What time is it now when you leave?"

"Ten-thirty, maybe. I mean, I wasn't looking at my watch every damn minute." He stares at her and feels dark and sluggish slumped against pillows on the bed. What happened next heaves darkly inside him and he doesn't want to step into that darkness.

"You got to her house. How? You didn't have the car."

"Taxi."

"You have the receipt?"

"Probably in my coat pocket."

"It would be good if you still have it," she suggests. "It should be in a pocket, you can look later. What happened next?"

"I got out and walked to the door. I rang the bell, she came to the door and let me in." The heaving darkness is right in front of his face now, like a storm about to break open on top of him. He takes a deep breath and his head throbs.

"Draven, it's all right," she says quietly. "You can tell me. Let's find out what. Exactly what. That's all we're trying to do."

"She..uh, she was wearing boots, like paratrooper boots, like steel toed black leather boots. Military boots. And she had on a big camouflage t-shirt." The darkness swallows him, seems to swallow him whole, and swallows more of him than he knew he had. "Nothing else, just that, and I was just sort of shocked, and didn't know why she was dressed like that. I didn't think nothing of it, not the way you might think. Then she shut the door behind me and put her hands on me."

"Where did she put her hands on you?"'

"She said she'd wanted me the minute we walked in that morning," he says, embellishing a little, but not a lot, because whatever her exact words were, the message he got was just that. She wanted him. She had wanted him the first instant she saw him when he and Rayne showed up at her house to ask about Emily.

"You said she put her hands on you, Where? What part of your body?"

"My pockets. In my pockets."

"Front or back pockets?"

"Front." His eyes drop to his lap and he blinks as he looks at the deep front pockets of his black cargo pants.

"The same pants you have on now?" Rayne asks, her eyes never leaving him.

"Yeah. These pants. I didn't exactly get around to changing my clothes. I didn't exactly get back to my room this morning. I got a cab and went straight to the morgue."

"We'll get to that," she replies. "After she put her hands in your pockets, then what?"

"Why do you want to know all this?"

"You know why. You know exactly why," she says in that same calm, steady tone, her eyes on him.

He remembers Denise's hands digging deep into his pockets and her pulling him into her house, laughing, saying how good he looked as she pushed the door shut with her foot. A fog swirls in his thoughts like fog swirling in the headlights as the taxi drove him to her house, and he knew he was heading into the unknown, but he went, and then she had her hands in his pockets and was pulling him into the living room, laughing, dressed in nothing but a camouflage t-shirt arid combat boots. She pressed against, him and he knew she could feel him and she knew he I could feel her soft and tight against him.

"She got a bottle of bourbon out of the kitchen," he says, and he listens to his voice but he isn't seeing anything inside the room as he tells Rayne. He's in a trance as tells her. "She poured us drinks and I said I shouldn't have any more. Maybe I didn't say that I don't know, She had me going. What can I tell you? She had me going. I asked her, what's the thing with the camouflage, and she said he was into that, Uniforms. Her husband. He used to get her to dress up for him and they would play."

"Was Emily around when he would ask Denise to wear uniforms and play?"

"What?"

"Maybe we'll get to Emily later. What did Frank and Denise play?"

"Games."

"Did she want you to play games last night?" Rayne asks.

The room is dark and he feels the darkness, and he can't see what he did because it is unbearable, and all he can think about as he tries to be truthful is how the fantasy will die forever. She will again him and it will never happen, never, and there will be no point in his ever hoping again, remotely hoping, because she will know what it might be like with him.

"This is important, Draven," she says quietly. "Tell me about the game."

He swallows and imagines he feels the bile in his throat, deep inside it and burning. He wants more tea but can't move and he can't bear to ask her to get him tea or anything else. She is sitting straight in the chair but not tensely, her strong, capable hands on the armrests. She is erect but relaxed in her mud-spattered suit. Her eyes are keen as she listens.

"She told me to chase her," he begins. "I was drinking. And I said what do you mean by chase. And she told me to go into the bedroom, her bedroom, and hide behind the door and to time it. She said for me to wait five minutes, exactly five minutes, and then start looking for her like. .. Like I was going to kill her. And I told her it wasn't right. Well, I didn't really tell her." He takes another deep breath. "I probably didn't tell her, because she had me going."

"What time was it by now?"

"I'd been there maybe an hour."

"She puts her hands in your pants the minute you walked through the front door at approximately ten-thirty and then an hour passes? Nothing

happened during that hour?"

"We were drinking. In the living room, on the lounge." He won't look at her now. He will never look at her again.

"Lights on? Curtains open or closed?"

"She'd built a fire. The lights were off. I don't remember if the contains were open." He thinks about it. "They were closed." "What did you do on the lounge?" "Talked. And made out, I guess."

"Don't guess. And I don't know what that means. What does it mean when you say you made out?" Rayne replies. "Kissing, fondling? Did you take your clothes off? Did you have intercourse? Oral sex?"

He feels his face turn hot. "No. I mean, the first part we did. Kissing, mostly. You know, making out. Like people do. Making out. We were on the lounge and talked about the game." His face burns. He knows she can see how hot his face is and he refuses to look at her.

The lights were out and the light from the fire moved over her flesh, her pale flesh, and when she grabbed him, it hurt and excited him, and then it simply hurt. He told her to be careful because it hurt, and she laughed and said she liked it rough, liked it very rough, and would he bite her, and he said no, he didn't want to bite her, not hard. You'll like it, she promised, you'll like biting hard. You don't know what you're missing if you've never done it rough, and all the while she talked her flesh caught the light of the fire as she moved, and he tried to keep his tongue in her mouth and please her while he crossed his legs and manoeuvred himself so she wouldn't hurt him. Don't be such a sissy, she kept saying as she tried to shove him down hard on the lounge and force his zipper, but he managed to keep her from getting to him. He was thinking about her teeth showing white in the firelight and what it would be like if she got those white teeth on him.

"The game began on the lounge?" Rayne asks from her distant chair.

"That's where we talked about it. Then I got up and she took me into the bedroom and told me to step behind the door and wait five minutes, like I said."

"Were you still drinking?"

"She'd poured me another drink, I guess."

"Don't guess. Big drinks? Little drinks? How many by now?"

"Nothing that woman does is in a small way. Big drinks. Three at least by the time she told me to go behind the door. It starts getting really fuzzy now," he says. "After the game started, it all starts to fade. Maybe it's a damn good thing."

"It's not a good thing. Try to remember. We need to know the what. did The what. Not the why. I don't care about the why, Draven. Trust me. There's nothing you can tell me that I haven't heard before. Or seen. I don't shock easily."

"No. I'm sure you don't. But maybe I do. Maybe I didn't think so, but maybe I do. I remember looking at my watch and having a real hard time seeing the time. My eyesight ain't what it used to be anyway, but it was blurring bad and I was keyed up, real keyed up, not in a real high good way. I don't know why I went along with it, to tell you the truth."

He was sweating profusely behind the door, trying to read his watch, of then he starting counting silently, counting up to sixty and losing his place and starting again until he was sure five minutes had passed. His excitement was not the sort that he had ever felt with a woman, no woman or encounter with a woman he could recall, not ever. He stepped out from behind the door and realized the entire house was dark. He couldn't see his own hands unless he held them very close to his face, and he felt along the walls and realized she could hear him, and this was when he realized in his drunken obtuseness, somehow as drunk as he was he realized his heart was pounding and he was breathing hard because he was excited and scared, and he doesn't want Rayne to know he was scared. He reached down to his ankle and lost his balance found himself on the hallway floor, feeling for his gun, but his gun wasn't in its holster. He doesn't know how long he sat there. It's possible he fell asleep, briefly.

When he came to, he didn't have his gun and his heart was pounding in his neck as he sat without moving, barely breathing, on the wooden floor, sweat streaming into his eyes, listening, trying to hear where the son of a bitch was. The darkness was so complete it was thick and airless and it wrapped around him like black cloth as he tried to get to his feet without making noise and giving away his position. The bastard was in here somewhere, and Draven didn't have his gun. With his arms out like oars, he barely brushed the walls as he moved himself forward, listening, ready to pounce, knowing he was going to get shot if he didn't catch the piece of shit by surprise. He moved slowly like a cat, his brain focused on the enemy, and the thought that kept coming to him was how did he get into the house and what house and what son of a bitch and where was his backup? Where the fuck was everybody? Oh Christ, maybe they were down. Maybe he was the only one left and now he was going down because he didn't have his gun and somehow he had lost his radio, and he didn't know where he was. And then he felt something hit him. And then he passed in and out of a heaving darkness, a hot darkness that drove the air out of him as it t moved and he became aware of pain, of burning pain as the darkness .moved and grabbed at him and made terrible wet noises.

"I don't know what happened," he hears himself say, and it surprises him that his voice sounds sane because inside he feels crazy. "I just don't know. I woke up in her bed."

"Clothed?"

"No."

"Where were your clothes, your belongings?"

"On the chair."

"In a chair? Neatly in a chair?"

"Yeah, pretty neatly. My clothes and my gun were on top of them. I sat up in bed and nobody else was there," he says.

"Was her side of the bed unmade? Did it look slept in?"

"The covers were pulled down and messed up, real messed up. But nobody was there. I looked around and didn't know where the hell I was and then I remembered I'd taken a taxi to her house, and I remembered her coming to the door dressed the way she was, you know, the night before. I looked around and saw a glass of bourbon on the tabletop my side of the bed, and a towel. The towel had blood on it and it scared the shit out of me. I tried to getup and couldn't. I just sat there. I couldn't get up."

He realizes his teacup is full, and it terrifies him that he has no recollection of Rayne getting up from her chair and refilling his tea or if maybe he did, but he doubts he did. He has a sense that he is in the same position on the bed that he has been in, and he notices the clock and more than three hours have passed since he and Rayne started talking in the room.

"Do you think it's possible she drugged you?" Rayne asks him. "Unfontunately, I don't think a drug test would be helpful at this point. Too much time has passed. It depends on the drug."

"Oh, that would be great. If I go get a drug test, then I may as well call the police myself, assuming she ain't already done it."

"Tell me about the bloody towel," she says.

"I don't know whose blood it was. Maybe it was mine. My mouth." He touches it. "I hurt like shit. I guess that's what she's into, hurting, but all I can say is. Well, I don't know what I did because I didn't see her. She was in the bathroom and when I stand calling out her name to see where the hell she was, she started screaming at me, screaming for me to leave her house and saying. She was saying all these things."

"I don't guess you thought to take the bloody towel with you."

"I don't even know how I managed to call a taxi to get out of there. In fact, dont remember towel, goddamn it."

"You came straight to the meeting this mourning." She, as if this part doesn't make sense.

"I stopped for coffee. A Seven-Eleven. Finally, I got the cabdriver to drop me off several blocks from the office so I could walk, hoping, could clear my head. It helped a little. I felt half human, no offence, again, and then I walked in the office and damn if she's not there."

"Before you got to the meeting, did you listen to your phone messages?"

"Oh. Maybe I did."

"Otherwise you couldn't have known about the meeting."

"No. I knew about the meeting," Draven says. "Eise told me at the that he'd passed on some information to Markus. An e-mail, that's what he said." He tries to remember. "Oh yeah, now I know. Markus was on the phone as soon as he opened the e-mail and said he was going to have to call a meeting for the next morning and he told Eise to make sure he was in the building in case he needed him to come down and explain things."

"So you knew about the meeting last night," Rayne says.

"Yeah, last night was the first I heard about it, and it seemed like Eise said something to make me think you was going to be there, so I knew I had to be there."

"You knew the meeting was to be at nine-thirty?"

"I must have. I'm sorry I'm so foggy. But I knew about the meeting." He looks at her and can't figure out what's going through her mind. "Why? What's the big deal about the meeting?"

"He didn't tell me about it until eight-thirty this morning," she replies.

"He's shooting bullets at your feet, making you dance," Draven says and he hates Agent. Markus.

"When you saw Mrs. Steward at the office this morning, did she speak to you?"

"She looked at me and walked off. Like she didn't know me. I don't understand nothing about this. I just know something happened and it's bad, and I'm scared shitless I did something really bad and now I'm going to get it. After all the shit I've done, now this is going to do it. This is it."

Rayne slowly gets up from her chair, and she looks tired, but she is alert, and he can see the worry in her eyes but he can also see she is thinking, she is making connections that he sure as hell isn't making. Her eyes are full of thoughts as she looks out the window and walks over to the service cart and drains the last little bit of tea into her cup.

"She injured you, didn't she?" she says, standing near the bed, looking down at him. "Show me what she did to you."

"Hell no! Hell no, I can't," he says in a whine that makes him sound ten years old. "I can't do that. No way."

"Do you want me to help you or not? You think you have something I've never seen before?"

He covers his face with his hands. "I can't do it."

"You can call the infirmary and they'll get you down and photograph your injuries. Then you've just started a case. Maybe that's what you want. Not a bad plan, assuming she's already called the police. But I suspect she hasn't."

He lowers his hands and looks up at her. "Why?"

"Why do I suspect that? Very simple. People know we're staying here. Doesn't Agent Tyde know you're staying here? Doesn't he have your phone numbers? So why haven't the someone shown up to arrest you? You think they wouldn't be all over you if Emily Steward's mother called 000 and said you raped her? And why didn't she scream when she saw you at the office? You just raped her and she doesn't make a scene or call the police right then?"

"Ain't no way I'm calling the police," he says.

"Then I'm all you've got." She walks back to her chair and picks up her nylon scene kit. She unzips it and pulls out a digital camera.

"Holy shit," he says, staring at the camera as if it is a gun pointed at him."

"Sounds like the victim here is you," she says. "Sounds like she wants you to think you did something to her. Why?"

"Shit if I know. I can't do it."

"You're hung over but not stupid, Draven."

He looks at her. He looks at the camera down by her side. He looks at Rayne standing in the middle of this room in her dark, mud-spattered suit.

"We're here working the death of her daughter, Draven. Mama clearly wants some kind of leverage or money or attention or some kind of something, and I intend to find out what it is she wants. Oh yes. I will find out. Take your shirt off, your pants off, take off whatever you need to take off to show me what that woman did to you during her sick little game last night."

"Now what are you going to think of me?" he says, pulling his black Polo shirt over his head, carefully, the fabric hurting him where it rubs the bite and suck marks all over his chest.

"God. Sit still. God damn it, why didn't you show me this earlier? We've got to take care of this or you're going to get infections. And you're worried about her calling the police? Are you out of your mind?" All this while she takes photographs, moving over him, getting close-ups of each wound."

"Thing is, I ain't seen what I did to her," he says, a little calmer, realizing that getting checked out by the hybrid might not be as bad as he thought.

"You did even half of this to her, your teeth should hurt."

He pays very close attention to his teeth and feels nothing at all, just his usual teeth and the usual way they feel. Thank God his teeth don't

hurt.

"What about your back?" she asks, standing over him.

"Lean forward. Let me look."

He bends over and feels her carefully move the pillows away from his back. He feels her warm fingers between his shoulder blades, her hands lightly touching his bare skin and pushing him farther forward as she examines his back, and he tries to remember whether she's ever touched his bare back before. She hasn't. He would remember.

"What about your genitals?" she asks as if it is nothing. When he doesn't respond, she says, "Draven, did she injure your genitals? Is there something there I should photograph, not to mention treat, or are we going to pretend that I somehow don't know that you have male genitalia like half the rest of the human race? Well, obviously she hurt your genitals or else you would simply tell me no. Correct?"

"Correct," he mutters, covering his crotch with his hands. "Yeah, I'm hurting, okay? But maybe you got enough already to proved your point, to prove she hurt me, no matter what I did to her, assuming I did something."

She sits on the edge of the bed not more than two feet from him and looks at him. "How about a verbal description. Then we'll decide if you need to take your pants off."

"She bit me. All over. And I got bruises."

"I can help you."

"Your no doctor."

"I know but I would have to indentify you in your were killed. If she killed you, who do you think would wan to see you and know every damn thing about it? But you're not dead, for which I'm extremely grateful, but you got attacked and have some of injuries you might have were you dead. And this all sounds

perfectly ridiculous, even to me, even as I'm saying it. Will you please let me take a look and see if you need medical treatment and if we need to take photographs?"

"What kind of medical treatment?"

"Probably nothing that a little Detol won't cure. I'll pick Some up at the infirmary."

He tries to imagine what will happen if she sees him. She has never seen him. She doesn't know what he has, and he might not be above average or below average, and ordinarily just being ordinary will get one by, but he doesn't know what to expect because he has no idea what she thinks or if she cares. So it's probably not smart to take off his pants. Then he thinks of riding in the back of an unmarked car and being photographed in lockup and going to court, and he unbuttons his pants and pulls down the zipper.

"If you laugh I'll hate you the rest of your life, " he says, and his face burns hot and he is sweating, and the sweat stings whatever it touches.

"You poor boy, " she says. "That crazy bitch, " she says.


	8. Revolations

**Sydney, Australia. TLP HQ. Present Day.**

Agent Blaze stepped into the room where the Agents were currently staying. None of them look up. She frowned. Rayne was sitting on a chair reading a notebook while Draven was playing with his glasses.

"Anyone listening to me at all?" she asked. Still no respond. She stepped in, grabbed the door and slammed it shut. The windowpanes rattled on impact. Only then, the two looked up. "Okay, now that I have your attention..." Blaze continued to Rayne's chair.

"I didn't find any trace of evidence of gambling debts or FBI warrents out on the father," she said handing a piece of paper to Rayne. "Instead, I found out that the mother is suspected of suffering from Munchausen's by proxy..."

"Mocha what?" Draven said. "Munchausen's by proxy..." Rayne repeated. "It is a bizarre syndrome in which primary care givers - usually mothers - secretly and cleverly abuse their children to get attention. They cut their flesh and break their bones, poison and smother them almost to death. Then these women rush to doctor's offices and emergency rooms and tell teary tales of how their little one got sick or hurt, and the staff feels so sorry for the mother. She gets so much attention. She becomes a master at manipulating medical professionals and her child may eventually die..." The two agents stared at her as if she had grown horns.

"Seriously... Apparently one of the doctors that treated Emily when she was in the hospital suspected she was being abused" she said.

"Women!" Draven snorted.

Rayne sat in silence. "It fits the pattern..." she said.

"What pattern?" Draven asked.

"Draven..." Rayne turned to him. "We don't know that Denise Stewart didn't kill her own daughter..."

"Oh, come on..." Draven said. "No one will believe that... I don't think I want to believe that..."

"Imagine the attention Mrs. Stewart has gotten because of her daughter's murder..." Rayne said.

"I won't argue with that. But how would Much...Mocha..." Draven struggled with the words. "Whatever the hell it is, explains your accusation?"

"Any woman who could do what was done to Emily could do anything to anyone. Besides, maybe Mrs.. Stewart is running out of relatives to kill. I'll be surprised if her husband really was on business. She probably killed him in some disguised, subtle manner, too. These women are pathological liars. They are incapable of remorse..." Rayne said.

"What you're suggesting goes beyond that Mocha crap... We're talking serial killings now..." Draven said.

"Cases aren't always one thing, because people aren't always one thing, Draven. You know that. And women serial killers often murder husbands, relatives, significant others. Their methods are usually different from those of male serial killer. Women psychopaths don't rape and strangle people. They like poisons. They like to smother people who can't defend themselves because they are either too young or too old or incapacitated for some other reason. The fantasies are different because women are different from men..."

"No one around her is going to believe what you're proposing..." Draven said. "It'll be hell to prove, if you're right..."

"You want to inform her that we are investigating her?" Blaze asked.

"No..." Rayne said and proceeds to tell Blaze of her conversations with Mrs. Stewart. "I don't want her to know to what we're thinking... We need to ask her questions. We need her to cooperate..."

"I agree..." Draven said.

"If what you're thinking is right, we'll push her buttons... She's going to draw us into her game..." he said.

"She's already drawn me you into it..." Rayne answered. "She'll draw you in deeper..."

"I hope she does..." Rayne felt the rage rising. She always felt a blinding rage against people who could hurt children. She could never imagine how someone could hurt their own child.

"I've got one piece of information about the duct tape that was used..." Blaze said. "Forensics were looking into who from this area might have worked at Shuford Mills during the tape was manufactured..."

"A very good idea..." said Rayne.

"There was a guy named Rob Kelsey who was a foreman there..."

"Does he still work there?" Hope glittered in Dravens eyes for the first time since returning to HQ.

"He is deceased, I'm afraid..."

"Damn!" said Rayne.

"What do you know about him?"

"White male, died at age sixty-eight of a stroke. Had a son ..."

"Do you have his address?" Blaze handed Rayne another paper.

"What his son's name?" Draven asked.

"Same as his father's..." Rayne reached for the phone and dialed the number on the paper.

"Hello?" a woman asked.

"Is this Mrs. Kelsey?" she asked.

"Yes..." The womens voice replied.

"I'm looking for Rob Kelsey, Junior..." Rayne questioned.

"Rob's not here..." she said. "He's gone on to the church..."

"Which church might that be?"

"Third Presbyterian..."

"I see..." Rayne said and she thanked her for her help and hung up. She turned and found Draven and Blaze watching her. "If you're going to church with me you'd better hurry up..."

"Church?" he frowned.

"Yes, Draven. A place where people worship God..."

"Jewish Church?" he asked.

"No..." He was very puzzled now. "We're going to a Presbyterian Church..."

Rob Kelsey, Jr. was in his fifties, a wiry man in a cheap blue suit collecting communion glasses from holders in the pews.

"Mr. Kelsey?" Rayne said as they approach him. He turned. "Yes?" "I'm Detective Benson, this is Detective Stabler. From the Sydney Water Police. We're wondering if we can talk to you for a moment..." Rayne lied, taking on the alias of Double Duo. She pulled out her fake ID as confirmation.

"Sure," he smiled.

"We understand you father used to work in Shuford Mills..." Draven started.

"That's right. Papa worked at the mill his entire life. They gave him a mighty nice console color TV when he retired and a solid gold pin..."

"He must have been a fine foreman..." Rayne said.

"Well, he wasn't that until he got up in years. Before that he was their top box inspector and before that he was just a boxer..."

"What did he do exactly? As a boxer?"

"He'd see to it the rolls of tape was boxed, and then eventually he supervised everybody else doing it to make sure it was right..."

"I see..." Rayne said. "Do you ever remember the mill manufacturing a duct tape that was blaze orange?" Kelsey thought about the question. "Why, sure. I remember that because it was an unusual tape. Never seen it before or since. Believe it was for a prison somewhere..."

"It was. But we're wondering if a roll or two of it might have ended up local. You know, here..." Draven said. "It wasn't supposed so. But these things happen because they get rejects and stuff like that. Rolls of tape that isn't just right..."

"And generally, when an item that don't pass inspection, employees might take or but them for a bargain..." Draven said. Kelsey didn't say anything. He looked perplexed. "Mr. Kelsey, do you know of anyone your father might have given a roll of that orange tape to?" Rayne asked.

"Only one person I know of. Jake Wheeler. Jake liked to hunt, I remember my daddy saying Jake was so afraid of getting shot out there in the woods by someone mistaking him for a turkey..." The agents said nothing. They weren't sure where this is heading. "He'd make too much noise and then wear reflectors-type clothing. He scared other hunters off all right... I don't think he ever shot a thing except squirrels..."

"What does this has to do with the tape?" Draven asked. "I'm pretty sure my daddy gave it to him as a joke. Maybe Jake was supposed to wrap his shotgun up in it of wear it on his clothes..." Kelsey grinned.

"Any chance he might have passed on that roll of tape to someone else?" Kelsey stared down at the tray of communion glasses in his hands, his brow wrinkled in thought. "I got no way to know if he passed it along. But he used to go hunting with Chuck Stewart..."

"Chuck Stewart was Denise Stewart's husband?" Rayne asked. "He was. A mighty nice man, too. It just killed us all when he passed on. If we'd known he had such a bad heart, we would've sat on him more, make him take it easy..."

"But he hunted..."

"Oh, he sure did. I went out with him and Jake a number of times. Those two liked to go out in the woods. I always told them to go to Africa..."

"Mr. Kelsey, did you know Chuck Stewart well?" Rayne had got a bone in her mouth now.

"I knew him from hunting and church..."

"What else can you tell us?" she pressed.

"He met his wife when he was in the army..."

""What does Mr. Stewart do?"

"Chuck was really good about fixing clocks... He did it for a hobby and got to where he was fixing all the clocks for the people here..."

"Where did he fix them?"

"He had a shop in his basement..." Mr. Kelsey would have talked all day, and they extricated themselves as kindly as they would.

"Where to now?" Draven asked as they got into the car. "Stewart's residence..." Answered Rayne gunning the engine. Draven nodded.

"How's you..everything, by the way?" she asked a smile playing at the corner of her mouth.

"Pretty much as good as new..."

"Well, that's rather miraculous, since they weren't new when you hurt them..." Draven laughed, more out of surprised than anything else. Under the circumstances, he wasn't expecting humor from her. The Stewart's house is just around the corner from the church. Rayne stopped the car a few feet away.

"I don't see her car..."Rayne said. "She could be out..."

"Another's car is here..." Rayne pointed to the dark red Maxima parked at the drive in. "That doesn't mean they aren't out..." Draven said. "It doesn't mean they are..."Rayne replied. A window is lit up. There was no movement.

"What do you think they're doing in there?" Rayne asked.

"Now, what do you think?" Draven asked, his meaning was clear.

"That's cheap. It's so easy to assume people are having sex..." Came the disgusted reply.

"It's so easy to assume because it's so easy to do..."

"Oh really?" Rayne raised her eyebrows. Draven grinned. "I'm gonna take a look around..." she said opening her door. "Wanna come?"

"My leg's killing me..." Draven replied. Rayne smiled knowingly and got out. Rayne walked down the fieldstone steps heading towards the house. She put her hand on the hood of the stranger's car. It was cold, meaning it had been parked here for quite sometime. She walked up to the front door. She was about to peek into the glass window when the door opened and Denise was standing there, looking at her.

"Welcome..." she said warmly, with eyes as hard as copper. Suddenly, Rayne dreaded coming alone. "Good morning, Mrs. Stewart..."

"Good morning..."

"I need to ask you some questions..." Denise opened the door wider and stepped aside to let her in.

"Do you have company? I'm sorry to have bothered you"

"That's okay, Their upstairs, asleep..." Denise said. "He wasn't feeling well, last night. You know there's a bug going around..."

"Maybe you should check on him..."

"Hershel just needs to sleep. I'll take him some hot tea and be right with you... Why don't you make yourself comfortable in the living room? Would you like coffee or tea?"

"Nothing, thank you..." Rayne said, the silence in the house disturbs her. As soon as she heard Denise go upstairs, she quickly looked around. To the left of the sink was a door leading outside. Opposite it was another one locked with a slide bolt. She slid back the bolt and turned the knob. Cold musty air announced the basement, as her eyes adjust to the darkness. Thanks to evolved form, she can see perfectly. She went down the, dark red painted wooden stairs because she had to see what was there. Nothing was going to stop her, not even the fear of getting caught by Mrs. Stewart. Chuck Stewart's worktable was still there, cluttered with tools and gear and an old clock face frozen in time. Rayne pulled on a string to turn on another light but the bulb was burned out. Near a wall, stacked with firewood coated with cobwebs, she found another shut door leading outside. Near a water heater another door led to a full bathroom, and she switched on the light. The toilet probably has not been flushed for years. She looked inside the tub and immediately detected a trace of blood around the drain.

She backed out as the door at the top of the stairs suddenly shuts, and she heard the bolt slide. Denise Stewart had just locked her in. Rayne ran in several directions, eyes darting around as she tried to think of what to do. Dashing to the door near the woodpile, she turned the knob, threw back the burglar chain and suddenly found herself in the sunny backyard. She did not see or hear anyone but she believed Denise was watching her.

"She had to know I would come out this way..." Rayne thought as she realized with horror at what was happening. She wasn't trying to trap her at all. Denise Stewart wanted to lock her out of the house, making sure that she couldn't come back upstairs. In automatic gear, Rayne ran to the front of the house, at the same time shouting for Draven and for dear god, prayed he wasn't sleeping. The gun was cold in her hands as she ran to the front door. It was locked. One kick, freed the door. She jumped up the carpeted stairs. She remembered the lit window and ran that way. The door was shut and when Rayne opened it, she was there, sitting placidly on the edge of the bed where a young man lay, a plastic trash bag over his head and taped around his neck.

What happened next was simultaneous. Rayne released the safety and racked her gun as Denise grabbed a pistol off the table and stood. Their guns rose together and Rayne fired. The deafening blast hit her like a fierce gust of wind, and Denise fell back against the wall as Rayne fired and fired. She ripped the bag off the stranger's head. Agent Markus's face was blue and she felt no pulse in his carotids. She pounded his chest four times and he gasped. He began to breathe. And Rayne realized she, herself had been holding her breath.


	9. Epilogue

Sydney, Australia. TLP HQ. Present Day.

Epoligue

The cemetery behind Third Presbyterian Church was a rolling field of polished granite headstones behind a chain link fence choked with trees. Emily Stewart was buried in a corner close to the woods where the lawn was pleasantly mingled with cornflowers, clovers, and Queen Anne's lace. Her monument was a small marble angel who stood in sad relief against the morning, wings unfolded back and head bent in prayer. The epitaph carved in its base read.

There is no other in the World-  
Mine was the only one  
Emily Dickinson.

The line held different meaning now, Rayne thought as she stared down at it. It was the word mine... Emily had had no life of her own but had been an extension of a narcisstic, demented woman with a insatiable appetite for ego gratification. Footsteps made Rayne turn and she saw Draven walking towards her. He stopped beside her and for a while just stood there looking down at the small grave. He then, looks up and slowly extended his hand towards her.

"Come on. You've earned a holiday" A smile on his lips. Rayne smiled too and turned around. Together, side by side, they walked out of the cemetery.

AuthorNote: That's it. I'm currently working on a second chapter of the Last Precinct, hopefully, series. Featuring Psystorm and a bit more in depth explaination how Rayne come to be part of The Last Precinct.


End file.
